The Dr. Jack Diamond Award

Description

The Dr. Jack Diamond Award has been created to honour the memory and contributions of Dr. Jack Diamond within his former role as Scientific Director of the Alzheimer Society Research Program and to commemorate his love for good scientific writing. The purpose of this special award is to recognize excellence in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) research carried out by trainees within the field. The award will be offered annually to meritorious authors of published, scientific articles in AD. Each year the Society will publicize the winners through existing channels, such as social media, the Society’s website and Reports on Research that are prepared for donors and the public.

Award

The award will consist of $1,000 paid directly to the awardee. Award winners are encouraged to use the funds towards the presentation of their research at a scientific meeting. Awardees will also receive a special certificate. Up to two awards will be announced each year.

Eligibility

The following eligibility criteria will apply:

Published articles are to be submitted by the authoring trainee.

Articles would have had to have been accepted for publication during the time the applicant was enrolled as a doctoral student/postdoctoral fellow.

Applicants must be doctoral students or post-doctoral fellows and must be the first author of the article.

Articles must be based on research projects in which the trainee has been directly involved during his/her period of doctoral or post-doctoral training. The applicant’s role must be clearly explained in the application form.

Trainees are required to hold a training award from the Alzheimer Society Research Program, during time the work was done.

The research article must have been published in a peer-reviewed journal within six months of the submission (open access publications are highly encouraged).

Canadians and non-Canadians conducting research in Canada are eligible to apply.

Canadian doctoral and postdoctoral fellows training in another country are eligible to apply.

Only one submission from any applicant is permitted for any given article.

Application and Review Process

Submissions will be accepted once a year with an annual deadline of December 31st. Applications will be reviewed by the Alzheimer Society of Canada’s Research Policy Committee. Applications are to be completed by trainees and submitted online. Review decisions will be made prior to March 31st of each year.

A prominent neuroscientist, Dr. Jack Diamond died at the Joseph Brant Hospital in Burlington on August 19, 2014 in his 86th year. Jack was an honorary member of the Canadian Association for Neuroscience, Scientific Director Emeritus of the Alzheimer Society of Canada and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University. Jack was born in Manchester, (UK) and got his medical and science degrees from the University College London.

Jack built a lively department focusing on developmental neurobiology, at McMaster University and was an enthusiastic participant in the Centers of Excellence for Neurosciences in Canada.

His own research, which was imaginative and of the highest quality, was concerned with regeneration and disorders of peripheral nerve; later he also studied risk factors for the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Jack wanted to understand beneficial and detrimental roles of collateral sprouting, “a poetry of nerve growth”.

After reaching retirement age at McMaster, Jack served for several years as Associate Director for Scientific Affairs at the Montreal Neurological Institute and was a valuable contributor to the Society for Neuroscience, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International, the ALS Society of Canada and the Spinal Cord Society.

One of Jack’s best qualities was the ability to give stimulating and amusing lectures; as a raconteur, Jack could hold an audience spellbound. His sonorous voice resonated beyond the walls of the lecture rooms. He was also a man of great enthusiasms; he loved nature, hiking, running, playing piano and reading detective stories.

"His boundless enthusiasm and excitement for discovery has motivated and encouraged a small army of investigators, and in more recent years I gained an added appreciation for his flair for making science understandable and relevant to the public. He was one-of-a-kind, will be sadly missed, but long-remembered." -Mark Bisby, Consultant, former Vice-President of Research for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)

Jack Diamond will be missed by his family, friends, students and neuroscientists across Canada and worldwide.